Peter Bornedal

“As Habermas says, we exist under the meta-logical force of our natural history, our contingent evolution into a species that not only perceives in a certain manner but also has a particular capacity to symbolize. In Nietzsche, Kantian categories are subsumed under the meta-logical principle of natural selection, as stated in later Nachlaß material (quoted here from Habermas): “We would not have the intellect we have if we did not need to have it (Nietzsche, WM 498523).” […] “In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was need that was authoritative (Nietzsche, WM 515524).” Thus, Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are not true in the sense that a concept corresponds to reality itself, they are ‘true’ in the sense that they have proven themselves useful in the service of preserving life. If truth is a fiction, and if the thing-in-itself as truth is a fiction, the correspondence theory of truth also becomes impossible to uphold. It all comes down to the preservation of man and, as Nietzsche says, “the preservation of man is not a proof of truth (Nietzsche, WM 497525).” Also noted by Habermas, Nietzsche always presupposes the classical metaphysical-ontological concept of truth, when he criticizes the ‘transcendental a priori’ or the ‘thing-in-itself.’ Against this exacting ideal of truth, truth-claims have to fail, and they seem to dwindle into the insignificant and random.”
― Peter Bornedal, Nietzsche's Naturalist Deconstruction of Truth: A World Fragmented in Late Nineteenth-Century Epistemology